Inspired by Make Something Month

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Have yourself a merry little Christmas – homemade decoration

This was yesterday’s project – my partner and I have collected unwanted wooden pallets and broken them up so we have wooden planks available for DIY and craft projects.

Inspired by a picture on Pinterest, I’ve made a… tree-shaped wall hanging for Christmas.

Materials:

– two long (around 80cm) and one short (around 60 cm) pallet planks

– white paint (leftover tester pot)

– small paintbrush

– tape measure

– pencil

– hand saw

– scrap paper

– wood nails

– hammer

I started by scrubbing the pallet wood clean, as it’s been outside gathering algae for a while, with a stiff brush and some Ecover all purpose cleaner. I then left them to dry while I did some planning.

The hardest part was figuring out the size of the lettering, and therefore the lengths of wood to cut. I sketched out the letters on scrap paper, cut them out and traced around them on the wood to get the lettering consistent (if I’d had a craft knife/scalpel I may have cut out a stencil and used this instead).

Then I marked up the lengths of wood and cut them using the handsaw (sawdust went in the compost bin). The ends weren’t rough, otherwise I’d have sanded them.

I have four leftover tester pots of paint, three blue and one white, and decided the white would make the best contrast with the wood, and was more seasonal.

Having painted the letters, the paint dried quite quickly so I was able to lay out the ‘branches’ on the ‘trunk’ (I measured each side to get them central, and measured a consistent 1.5cm gap between them), and attach them using three nails per branch. This morning I wound a small piece of picture wire around two of the nails so I could hang it on the wall.

I’m pretty pleased with this one!

If you’re interested in making things from pallets, there are groups on Facebook and boards on Pinterest with loads of good ideas. There are different kinds of pallets, and some are treated with fairly unpleasant chemicals, so be aware of this as it may influence what you use them for. You can often pick up pallets for free from companies who otherwise return or recycle them – I got this from a house nearby that had some building materials delivered on it.